Page to her stout and disdainful attendant.

"Nothing, ma'am," said James.

"Dear me, dear me," said Mrs. Le Page. "Well then, we must walk," said
the deep despairing voice of the Pirate King.

And walk they did.

That walk was, as Mrs. Cole afterwards said, "a pity," because it
destroyed the Le Page tempers when the day was scarcely begun. Mr. Le
Page was, it was quickly descried, not intended for walking. Strong and
fierce though he seemed, heat instantly crumpled him up. The perfect
crease of his white trousers vanished, his collar was no longer
spotless, little beads of perspiration appeared almost at once on his
forehead, and his black beard dripped moisture. Mrs. Le Page, with her
skirts raised, walked as though she were passing through the Valley of
Destruction; every step was a risk and a danger, and the difficulty of
holding her skirts and her sunshade at the same time, and of seeing that
her shoes were not soiled and her hat not caught by an offending bough
gave her face an expression of desperate despair.

There was, unfortunately, one spot very deep down in the lane where the
ground was never dry even in the height of the hottest summer.

A little stream ran here across the path, and the ground on either side
was soft and sodden. Mrs. Le Page, struggling to avoid an overhanging
branch, stepped into the mud; one foot stuck there, and it needed Mr.
Cole's strong arm to pull her out of it.

"Charlotte! Charlotte!" she cried. "Don't let Charlotte step into that!
Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! I charge you--my child!" Charlotte was conveyed
across, but the damage was done. One of Mrs. Le Page's beautiful shoes
was thick with mud.

When, therefore, the party, climbing out of the Lane, came suddenly upon
the path leading down to the Cove, with the sea, like a blue cloud in
front of them, no one exclaimed at the view. It was a very beautiful
view--one of the finest of its kind in the United Kingdom, the high
rocks closing in the Cove and the green hills closing in the rocks. On
the hill to the right was the Rafiel Old Church, with its graveyard that
ran to the very edge of the cliff, and behind the Cove was a stream and
a green orchard and a little wood. The sand of the Cove was bright gold,
and the low rocks to either side of it were a dark red--the handsomest
place in the world, with the water so clear that you could see down, far
down, into green caverns laced with silver sand. Unfortunately, at the
moment when th